This Night, This Crowd
by welcome to maddieland
Summary: An ice cream stand, licorice, and one skinned knee lead Massie and a cowboy from Montana to each other. This Town prequel. Two-shot. Mosh. AU
1. Chapter 1

Recently on my formspring, somebody asked if I'd write a Mosh fic. Mosh is not one of my top pairings (sorry! I'm being honest) so I'm compromising and writing a Mosh oneshot.

A different someone also asked me if I'd write a This Town sequel. So combined with the prompts that Anonymous Asker #1 gave me and the want for a follow-up to This Town from Anonymous Asker #2, I came out with this.

For Maya, lover of Mosh, and Anonymous Asker #1. Anon-Asker #2, I'll think about that Massington sequel.

* * *

**This Night, This Crowd**

_A This Town prequel_

Two-shot, **Mosh**

(Listen to **All Time Lows** by **Hellogoodbye **while you read)

* * *

"_We could stop by Ahnna Rae's place for lunch," William suggested. "I bet that boy still works there. What was his name? Spur? He could give Chris a run for his money, don'tcha think?_

_Massie took a long sip of her glass-bottled Coke. "Spur was what his friends called him. His real name was Josh," Massie murmured, finally deigning to speak._

-x-

During Spring Breaks and summers, everyone else in Westchester, Texas heads down to Galveston. But the Block Family? We pack up the Range Rover and drive down to Sergeant, Texas.

If there are two things you must know about Sergeant, it is that number one, it is in the Middle of Nowhere, and number two, it is home to the biggest bunch of rednecks you will ever meet, excluding some parts of East Texas.

I love it. I absolutely love it.

Our house there isn't huge—two bedrooms, one bath upstairs, and a little apartment downstairs—but it's cozy, and there's even a kennel for Bean, a slide for Abbie and a trampoline for me.

I always think that Westchester is small until we spend a week down there. There are a few restaurants and churches, but most of it is wide, open pastures on one side and the ocean on the other side. They don't even have a proper grocery store—what they lovingly call the 'Sergeant Wal-Mart' is just a gas station store with a little more than just the usual cookies and chips.

But despite all that, Sergeant still feels like home, sometimes more than Westchester ever does.

-x-

The day after my 14th birthday party, Mom and Abbie and I drove on down to Sergeant with the intention of spending the rest of July hanging out there, driving our boat on the brackish creek next to our house and fishing (or in my mother's case, tanning).

Dad was already there when we arrived, drinking Bud Lite on the porch with Raleigh, our very corpulent and very sunburned neighbor, who held the record for dating nearly every woman in Sergeant.

We went through our usual routine: sit on the porch, sip beer/wine/juice boxes, eat pizza from the Sergeant Wal-Mart, and try not to sit in the direct line of Raleigh's cigarette smoke. The sun went down, Raleigh went home (or bar-hopping, more likely) and Mom said that as an extra birthday present, I could sleep in the downstairs apartment with Bean.

When I snuggled under the Pottery Barn covers that night, I thought it was going to be another normal couple of weeks down by the creek.

I was wrong.

-x-

On the weekends, we always go to Sting Rae's for lunch and sometimes, we end up staying so late that we eat dinner there too. It's a waterfront restaurant owned by a woman named Ahnna Rae, who's a year-rounder. My dad refers to her as 'Miss Sergeant America' and yes, Raleigh has dated her.

We've been going there for years and we know Ahnna Rae and all of her waiters and waitresses personally, but this year, Ahnna Rae had acquired a new boy to bus tables.

He looked about my age, although a bit shorter than me, and he had these brown, brown eyes and this brown, brown hair that flopped all in his face. Every once in awhile, he'd do this little head flick, and all of his perfectly mussed sandy brown waves would scoot out of his eyes for just a couple of minutes before falling back into position.

"May I help you?" he asked, notepad in hand.

My family, Raleigh, his two boys and one girl all made their drink orders before he finally turned to me, his already sun-dappled cheeks coloring slightly.

"Um, do y'all have lemonade?" I blurted.

He made an attractive grunting noise and nodded.

"Then, um, I'll have lemonade."

He scribbled on the pad and whisked off back into the kitchen. After he delivered our drinks, Lindsey, Raleigh's daughter leaned close.

"He's totally looking at you," she whispered.

"Really?" I whispered back. The girl was nine; I seriously doubted her knowledge of the ways of flirting. But Abbie, who was going on three and had a knack for stating the blindingly obvious, nodded in agreement.

I looked back at him. He looked away.

Another waiter ended up serving us our food, and I never did manage to glimpse his name on his nametag. But Raleigh, God bless him, wasn't half as oblivious as my mother and father were, and gave me the full scoop during beer-on-the-porch-time later that day.

"His name," Raleigh muttered as my dad went back inside for refills. "Is Joshua Hotz. But he goes by Spur. He's a cowboy from Montana, and he's ridden a bull. Like, twice."

"No way," I said.

Raleigh set down his Budweiser and looked me square in the eye. "I bet you five dollars, little girl."

I smiled smugly and sipped my glass-bottled Coke. "Okay. You're on."

The next day was beach time with Abbie, Lindsey, her brothers, and her various cousins, who all looked like miniature Raleighs waddling about in the sand. I, however, was itching to get back to Sting Rae's, and was just about to call and ask Dad if we could eat there for dinner when fate dropped a white Chevy Tahoe with an orange trailer hitched to the back into my life.

There, in bright blue letters across the side of the orange trailer, were the words 'Spur's Ice Cream Stand'. The white Tahoe traveled a few ways more down the beach, parked, and none other than Spur himself jumped out of the driver's seat and began to unhitch the trailer and set it up.

"See that?" Raleigh called. "Your boy's an entrepreneur!"

All of Raleigh's children and nephews stopped what they were doing to turn and stare at me.

"Shut up, Raleigh!" I hollered. The kids went back to their dirt clod war, and I went back to tanning.

Not ten minutes later did I feel a tug on my arm. It was Abbie.

"I wan some ice cweam," she announced, pointing back towards the orange trailer. I turned towards Raleigh, who smiled innocently and handed me seven dollars. I sighed, hoisted Abbie up onto my hip, and charged across the sand.

"Hi!" I chirped when we arrived at Spur's Ice Cream. "Could we have two small Yellow Cake Batters, please?"

He made the grunting noise again and went to the back to scoop.

"I really like your trailer thing," I said when he came back with our cones.

He simply nodded and said, "That'll be four-fifty."

I handed him the money. "You don't talk much, do you?"

He gave me a vague sort of smile, handed me my change, and shook his head.

-x-

When Dad and Raleigh decided that they were going to do Happy Hour at Sting Rae's two days later, I begged to go with them.

"Please, Daddy? Please? All I want is a virgin daiquiri and let's face it, somebody has to make sure that you and Raleigh don't pass out before six o'clock."

"Oh, let'er come, William." Raleigh smirked at me. I scowled. Dad sighed and told me to hop in the car.

As soon as Dad went to go get drinks, I began my search for Spur.

"Oh, he don't work here after lunch hours," said Raleigh.

"Then why the hell did you bring me here?" I snapped.

"To see you make that face," he replied, breaking into his wheezy chuckle.

Dad came back with the drinks, and Raleigh began casually searching through the crowd.

"Looking for love, Raleigh?" I sneered.

Raleigh took a gulp of beer. "Nope."

"Massie, Raleigh's not looking for Miss Right," Dad began. "He's looking for Miss Right _Now_."

"Okay. If you could pick one woman here to be your Miss Right Now, who would it be?" I asked.

At that exact moment, a very blonde woman in a lime green dress with breasts the size of Alaska strutted by. Raleigh carefully eyed her ass before proclaiming, "Her."

I rolled my eyes. "Sure."

"Hey, I don't have to go to no ice cream stand," Raleigh snapped back. Dad stared, confused, before shaking his head and downing the rest of his scotch and water.

-x-

We stopped at the Sergeant Wal-Mart on the way home to stock up on more Bagel Bites. Dad sent me down the candy aisle to pick up some Twizzlers for Mom—her love of licorice is unexplainable, considering that she abhors all other types of candy. Just as I reached for the second-to-last bag, the other person on the aisle reached for it too.

It was him.

"Hi, Spur!" I cried, dropping the bag on the floor. He bent down to pick it up and handed it back to me.

"Hi, uh…" he scratched the back of his neck. "Sorry, I don't actually know your name. But you did order lemonade at Sting Rae's and you and your sister like the Yellow Cake Batter flavour." He shot me a shy smile.

I grinned—he remembered me! "You're right, you don't know my name." I picked up the last bag of Twizzlers as well and began to walk towards the register. "But some things are for me to know and you to find out, right?"

Dad paid, and I waved goodbye to a very stunned Spur.

-x-

I made a point of spending the next few days hanging around the house, watching Full House reruns with Abbie and swimming in the blow-up pool with Mom. About a week after we arrived in Sergeant, Raleigh came by on his boat.

"Kendra! I'm taking Abbie and Massie to Sting Rae's!" Raleigh called. Mom waved at him from the porch, I put Bean on a leash, we all hopped in the boat and we were off.

It took twice as long to get there by boat but Bean and Abbie enjoyed every minute of it, Abbie clapping her hands and Bean barking at the surf. When we parked at Sting Rae's dock, Abbie immediately crawled off and toddled away to go find Ahnna Rae. I began to chase after her with the dog, but Raleigh quickly steered me towards the parking lot, where Spur and his orange trailer were parked.

"He's even been taking on dinner shifts, trying to find you," said Raleigh. "It's time to set things straight, girl."

When we walked up to Spur's Ice Cream, his face broke out in the biggest smile.

"Hey, No-Name," Spur drawled. "Hey, Raleigh."

Raleigh nodded at him. "Surprise me."

Spur shrugged, and before I could even place my order, he was off in the back. He came back with two cones—one yellow cake batter, the other, a classic chocolate.

"By the way, boy," Raleigh began, winking at me. "Have you ever ridden a bull?"

Spur shrugged and handed him the change. "Sure. Like, twice."

Raleigh nudged me and whispered, "You owe me five dollars." As we both turned to walk away, Spur called out.

"No-Name!" I whipped back around. "When will I see you again?"

"I don't know," I confessed.

"Tomorrow?" he tried. I shook my head.

"What about tonight?"

I bit my lip. "One of the restaurants around here is having a karaoke night," I said. "If you come find me, you get a prize."

I ran after Raleigh before he could say anything more.


	2. Chapter 2

Karaoke night at the Iron Cactus is always an adventure, because no matter how many times I swear up and down that I will not get up there and sing, I always end up on that stage and sing some god-awful song from High School Musical or something by the Beatles while the locals stare in confusion, probably because they've never heard of High School Musical or the Beatles.

But tonight was different, special, even, because if I'd played my cards right, and if Spur was as good a detective as I hoped he was, he'd be here tonight. And I still had to figure out what his prize would be for finding me.

I ate dinner quickly and spent the rest of the night anxiously bouncing on the wooden bench of our table. Every time we heard sneakers crunch on the collection of old beer bottle caps that served as a walkway to the outdoor dining area, Raleigh, Abbie, and I would whip our heads towards the sound, but it was never him.

Figuring that things would go by faster if I sang a couple of songs, I got up on the stage and performed a rather horrible rendition of 'Breaking Free' with Abbie doing Troy's parts.

As we headed back down the stage's stairs after our turn, I misjudged the final step and went sprawling onto the concrete pavement, skinning my knee. After using every bit of my willpower not to scream something obscene, I let out a very loud, "Holy Moses!" that still got me dirty looks.

"Need some help?"

He had found me.

Spur smiled serenely as he dabbed off my knee with a wet napkin and stuck a cupcake-shaped band-aid on the cut.

"Hey, I have cupcake band-aids too!" I cried as he helped me stand.

"Yeah…Raleigh actually dug them out of your purse."

"Oh. Right."

We stood there for a minute, just looking at each other.

"So, No-Name, you did promise me a prize."

"Yes, I did." I hesitated only a moment before gesturing towards the back of the restaurant. "Follow me."

Back behind the Iron Cactus is a soft, weed-ridden field that little kids run around and play kickball on, if they can find a ball. But I've always liked it because it gave me a perfect view of the restaurant at night, with all of its twinkling, tacky Christmas lights and leafy palm trees.

So that's what I showed Spur when we got to the back of the field, the restaurant silhouetted against this perfect sunset that's lavender and yellow and pink all at once, with the Christmas lights as a finishing touch.

"This is your prize," I said in a small voice.

"It's beautiful," he admits.

I haven't kissed anyone since I was five and Alicia Rivera married Derrick Harrington and I in her playhouse. But that was nine years ago, and it sure as hell didn't count to me, not any more, at least.

So I turned to Spur and kissed him.

Only when we pulled away from each other did I finally tell him, "My name is Massie Block."

He nodded slowly. "I'm Joshua Hotz. But my friends call me Spur."

"And you've ridden a bull."

"Like, twice."

He grinned and leaned in again.

Of course, as only Raleigh could do, he sent Lindsey back to check on us. And she ran back to her father screaming, "Massie and Spur are makin' out! Massie and Spur are makin' out!" It wasn't long before every child at the Iron Cactus was running around in the field, singing, "Massie and Spur, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…"

I didn't really care, because the night was still perfect.

-x-

The next day, I found him on the beach, selling ice cream out of his orange trailer. He already had a Yellow Cake Batter cone waiting for me. We climbed into the back of his mom's truck and sat for a while, sharing my cone.

"I'm going to Colorado next week," he confessed.

"Why?"

"To visit my dad," he sighed. I frowned.

"I guess I'll be leaving soon too…end of July."

He nodded. I blew out a long breath, sending my side bangs scattering across my head.

"So…so let's make the best of it while we can," I finally said. He turned to me and grinned and before I knew it, he had picked me up and thrown me over his shoulder and was going to dump me in the water, and I was screaming and laughing and crying all at once, and I couldn't help but pray:

_Thank you, God, for Raleigh and this boy with brown, brown hair and brown, brown eyes._

-x-

I still thought about him sometimes, especially when I was flirting with Chris Plovert via Gmail Chat during the fall that followed.

I liked Chris, I really did, but not half as much as I had liked Spur.

But then Chris asked me out and I realized that _holy crap, I had a real boyfriend_, so Spur moved to the back of my head.

And then stupid Derrick Harrington hit me in the forehead with a badminton racket during PE one day, and it became all about annoying him by being as showy with Chris as humanly possible. So I forgot about Spur altogether, leaving an ice cream cone-shaped hole in my heart.

-x-

_Massie leaned against the Range Rover, impatiently waiting for William and Raleigh to wrap up their conversation._

"_Sting Rae's made it through the storm," said Raleigh, rubbing his shoulder. "I think a couple of windows got knocked out, though. But she's fine, and all of her employees are okay, and I think Spur's Ice Cream is still in tact."_

_Raleigh shot a pointed look Massie's way and she smiled just enough to let him know that she'd understood._


End file.
